# PROVENANCE — I Built an Offline AI Antique Appraiser That Runs in a Basement with No Signal

> Source: <https://dev.to/sohaibtausif141/provenance-i-built-an-offline-ai-antique-appraiser-that-runs-in-a-basement-with-no-signal-5lj>
> Published: 2026-10-18 15:09:13+00:00

*This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week2-2026-10-12)*

**PROVENANCE** is a private, fully-offline antique appraisal and listing writer for resellers who flip on eBay, Etsy, Depop, and Facebook Marketplace.

You drop a photo of an item. It gives you back:

Everything runs on your laptop. Nothing leaves the room. $0 per appraisal after setup.

**Who would pay for it?** Serious resellers — people doing 50–200+ items a month. They're already paying cloud listing tools $20–$50/month. PROVENANCE replaces that with a $29 one-time license (or $9/month for model updates). At 50 items/month, it pays back in under two months. At 200 items/month, the savings are $80–$100/month, *forever*.

The unsolved problem: estate sales happen in basements with no Wi-Fi. Purchase costs and sourcing locations are competitive intelligence — resellers don't want them on a server. And cloud listing tools charge per-item, which compounds at volume.

**Try it with zero setup:** If Ollama is not installed, MOCK MODE activates automatically — the full UI runs with realistic canned responses so you can evaluate the product before installing anything.

```
bash
git clone https://github.com/sohaibq914/HACKTOBER_W2
cd HACKTOBER_W2
.\start.ps1   # Windows — installs deps, starts both servers, opens browser
./start.sh    # Linux / macOS
```